Share the Love: Lessons from the MTC Then and Now

I have a unique opportunity to serve each week here in Provo that cannot be done anywhere else in the world.  Provo is home to the largest Missionary Training Center of the Latter-day Saint Church.  Before being shipped out to serve a two or one-and-a-half-year mission, 18 to 26-year-old missionaries come to one of the 13 Missionary Training Centers throughout the world to be taught how to best find and teach people the restored gospel of Jesus Christ found in the LDS faith.  The Provo MTC is where all missionaries about to serve in Japan go and is where I get to serve the missionaries there once a week.

My MTC District Outside the Provo Temple

I once lived in the MTC myself as a young 18-year-old missionary, spending June and July of 2014 there constantly studying Japanese and the gospel with a group of nine other missionaries.  I had never spoken a lick of Japanese before and was there taught by previously returned missionaries not just Japanese words and grammar patterns but techniques for teaching as well.  When we taught one of the five missionary lessons detailing basics beliefs of our church that I had known my whole life I found myself struggling to find the words I needed to communicate what me and my companion had planned to teach.

Now a returned missionary I have the opportunity to volunteer every Wednesday to be taught by the current missionaries preparing to serve the Lord in various parts of Japan.  I get buzzed in the gates by a security guard and go to building 18M on the MTC campus.  Fifteen or so other Japanese speaking volunteers meet together to sing a hymn and pray in Japanese before going to be taught by the missionaries.  Then the missionaries practice teaching in Japanese to us strangers.

When I was Elder Hall, this time to teach random strangers (usually returned missionaries like myself) was always scary.  I fumbled over words and didn’t really know how I could help these people.  They were light years ahead of me spiritually and in their Japanese speaking ability.  I’m always surprised by how prepared and willing to speak many of the missionaries are that teach me because frankly, I wasn’t.

Being on the other side is quite humbling.  Even though I’ve completed my mission and my ability to speak Japanese has vastly improved since my stay at the MTC I still learn something from the missionaries that teach me every week.  I often wonder if I am serving them or if I am the one being served.

Last month I had such an uplifting experience.  We had one more volunteer than set of missionaries so instead of being taught alone like usual I was with another returned missionary.  The two missionaries came, knocked on our door and we welcomed them in.  They introduced themselves, asked for our names and dived right into the lesson.   Each one would take turns talking, occasionally glancing over their notes, and would ask us to read scriptures for them.  Both tried real hard to speak without any blemishes but glances at their companions and mumbled English words came out of their mouths occasionally as they searched for a word they previously had learned but that they could not resurface to the front of their minds in the time of need.

Their lesson was on sharing the pure of love of Christ.  It didn’t matter that one elder said reality instead of charity; we understood what they meant.  Nothing was particularly flashy about their presentation of their message.  We were asked to read a couple well known scriptures such as Moroni 7 and were greeted with a couple of awed すごい’s as the two elders realized that we could read the Japanese characters at a decent speed. 

What was different about this certain lesson came as they were committing us to show charity to others every day in our lives.  After a couple of closing remarks, one elder pulled out of his suit pocket little pocket sized booklets.  On these simple pocket-sized, white paged booklets were inscribed in simple Japanese “Developing Christ-like Attributes” and on the inside contained specific tips and ways we could do just that.

It didn’t matter that they didn’t write with the complex characters that the Japanese learn in school.  It didn’t matter that it wasn’t perfectly drawn.  What mattered is that they spent the time and energy to make this for us in a language neither of them had studied much less than a month ago.  Those scribbles on a page in a foreign language didn’t just contain ink or even just labor and time, it contained something much more.

It was a lesson I had first learned when I was on the opposite side of the table.  The missionaries I lived and studied with every day for two months showed me this same charity despite not having known me before entering the MTC.  No matter how much Japanese I didn’t understand or how much my 18-year old immaturity showed, few times in my life have I been surrounded by such loving and understanding people.  Whether it was my companion Elder Ricks having his mom embroider “Elder Hall” on a towel for my birthday or when one of the sisters would encourage me that even if I was struggling that I could learn Japanese.

Me and Elder Ricks

That day those two elders not only practiced teaching in Japanese but also reminded me of these fond memories of being in the MTC as a young missionary and the charity that was shown to me.  Many people fluent in Japanese could have never taught me what those two did.  When we show others love, we don’t need to use flowery words, buy gifts worth enormous amounts of money or in this case know every grammar pattern.  All that is needed to show love is to show others that we care.

So when the next set of missionaries came in and asked the returned sister missionary I was sitting next to if we were ‘together’, I wasn’t all that surprised; however, I am surprised every Wednesday by the amount of love and encouragement I receive from these young missionaries in less than perfect Japanese because really, when it comes down to it, all that matters is that we let others know that we care.